


Drifting and Collisions

by ecrituredelafangirl



Category: VIXX
Genre: ADHD, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrituredelafangirl/pseuds/ecrituredelafangirl
Summary: Once the choice is made, once you're on the path, once you become the person who can love and accept love in return, the string appears. It leads you home.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here's something I'm trying. *raises glass to you*
> 
> Shout out to my beta reader Jess. Without her there would be "a broad shouldered" and not "broad shouldered and over six feet tall," and no one wants that.

When Sanghyuk got on the train, his mind was still filled with Amsterdam. It was a hazy glow, layered in oranges and deep purples – even after a month in Europe he wasn’t quite used to the fact that cities could exist almost atop the water. Next to the water, he understood that, that was almost like home, but in Amsterdam the canals were right next to the roads, almost like roads themselves. He ruffled the pages of the guidebook as he found and flopped down into an empty train seat.

“That was your favorite place we’ve been. It had to be.” Sungjae sat down next to him, shoving his bag between his legs as the train pulled out of the station. He always asked, after every city they left, whether or not it had been Sanghyuk’s favorite. Sanghyuk felt as though he was trying to parse out every aspect of Sanghyuk’s personality from his taste in European cities. He found himself chuckling a bit at the familiar inquiry. 

“I don’t know. I still really liked Barcelona,” Sanghyuk said, relaxing back into his seat, settling in for their journey to Cologne. “Good food.”

“Ah, I forget that all you care about is a city’s flavor profile,” Sungjae muttered, fake affronted. “Not the history of the architecture or the –“ Sanghyuk flung his arm out, catching Sungjae in the chest with the guidebook. Sungjae clutched at it, authentically affronted now.

“Shut up, won’t you?” Sanghyuk said, and Sungjae smiled almost in spite of himself as he took the guidebook, flipping to the spread on Cologne, Germany and giving it a cursory glance.

“Although it does seem that this place has some quality architecture,” he indicated a passage next to a large picture of a some kind of church building. “ _Gothic_ architecture, whatever that means.” Sanghyuk snorted in response, as he attempted to get comfortable enough in his seat for a nap. It was late.

“You sound so enthused,” he murmured, and saw Sungjae smile before he closed his eyes.

Early on in their trip, Sungjae had decided that he liked to read the guidebook profile on a place before they went there, attempting to plan where they would go and what they would do once they got there. It worked about half the time, Sanghyuk figured. 

“Do you know if there’s a hostel near the train station?” he muttered, keeping his eyes closed.

“Mmmmm, no. Someone decided we needed to take the next train out of Amsterdam _right now_ about an hour and a half ago. I haven’t exactly had time to research our destination,” Sungjae replied, and Sanghyuk sighed deeply, making a show of pulling out his phone.

“And here I wanted to _nap_ ,” he griped. Sungjae didn’t respond.

There was a youth hostel close enough to the train station that Sanghyuk wasn’t worried about walking there at one in the morning. He honestly wasn’t particularly worried about attack (he was broad shouldered and over six feet tall, not exactly an easy target), but, if he was being completely honest, the dark was not his favorite thing, especially when he was freshly arrived in a new country. He shivered at the thought, idly hoping he and Sungjae would be in bed by 2 in the morning. 

He closed his phone after he had mapped out a walking route in his head, and settled in for his nap. A couple minutes later, Sungjae closed the guidebook and leaned into Sanghyuk’s side, almost snuggling into him, his head on Sanghyuk’s shoulder. Sanghyuk grinned to himself, without opening his eyes.

“You’re a nice pillow, Hyukkie,” Sungjae said, in his cutesy tired voice. Sanghyuk felt himself flush and had to make a grumbly dissatisfied sound to pretend he didn’t like it. It wasn’t like it was new, this prickle of attraction to his best friend, but it also wasn’t something he wanted to think about. They had a nice thing going here, going all the way across Europe; he didn’t want to make things weird by _holding his hand_. No, he’d keep that for himself for now.

Sanghyuk didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, but he knew when he woke up – the warmth of Sungjae gone from his side, a cacophonous sound closing in on him from _everywhere_. He opened his eyes, looking around at Sungjae, who was sitting straight up, a look of pure terror in his eyes, and that’s when Sanghyuk realized what was happening. The train was crashing – derailing, colliding, _something_ – and they were careening off the tracks. It happened in a blinding second, the last thing he actually remembered was seeing Sungjae’s white, wide-eyed face. And then he collapsed into darkness, and crushing pain. Then there was less pain…but it hadn’t stopped…it was merely absent. His terror was swallowed into unconsciousness.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

8400 miles away, Lee Jaehwan fell out of his bed and onto the floor, terrified of the absence of pain. He opened his eyes to the calm of the sunrise and a red string tied primly around the fourth finger on his left hand, trailing off, away from the sun.


	2. Hakyeon

Hakyeon remembered when it happened clearly. He had been out for a walk at dusk, just wandering around, deep in thought. The next year, he was expected to go to college, to study something sensible and lucrative so that in _five years_ he could get a job. Just like that. A simple, succinct plan that should have been easy to follow. He would move home when he was finished, and spend the rest of his days drifting along, probably having some kind of family with someone tied to him by a string, blue, orange, purple (only the real love, the soulmate level love, got the red string - and he would be a fool to _expect_ that) and he would live and be marginally happy until the day he died. And that was honestly the problem.

It was an airless plan, there was no room to breathe within it. He felt as though if he travelled down this path, he would be letting his life _happen to him_ , when he desperately wanted some semblance of control. He felt as though if he chose this route, with its neat numbers, files, cubicles, missionary sex, sensible amount of children, neat house, maybe a garden, never going anywhere, never seeing anything worthwhile, he would be suffocating under the weight of his own...lifelessness. And it wasn’t that such a life was a bad one, he had watched his brother choose exactly that life, and he seemed perfectly happy. It was just...he didn’t want it, not for himself. He didn’t want to fade into a life where he felt like one choice would cut him off from all others. He wanted a sense of freedom, maybe even an adventure. A chance to follow his dreams? Maybe.

Hakyeon wanted to dance, and he knew it. Anyone who knew him knew it. Anyone who had ever seen him perform knew it. He was, without bragging or being over the top _meant for it_. Or at least that was what some middle aged woman had told him once, two years ago, pulling him aside after a performance and telling him he shouldn’t waste his gifts. At the time he had merely bowed politely, and given his thanks, before re-ingratiating himself with the teeming crowd of dance students and proud parents. However, right now, he couldn’t help playing the incident over and over in his head. Why would he keep going back to this moment, this precise moment, if there was nothing in it for him? He wouldn’t, he thought. He just wouldn’t. That meant something. It had to. 

He twisted his hands together, pausing for a moment on a street corner. He was suddenly out of breath, thinking too fast to really keep a handle on each individual thought. And he was mildly panicky as he thought. If he chose… No, he couldn’t… But what if he was _meant_ to? No, that was nonsense spouted from his nephew’s storybooks. Or was it?

And honestly, that was the thought that did it. His nephew. If his nephew could believe in happy endings and dreams and all that shit that a life at a desk job was begging him to give up on...then why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he go and study and be _determined_ to make it as a dancer? Why couldn’t he follow his dreams? There was no answer to these questions he thought, staring down at a crack in the sidewalk, because aside from petty reasons, reasons that spoke with his parents’ voices and told him to be _sensible_ , there wasn’t any. There were no reasons for him not to, none that spoke with his voice, none that he thought deserved merit. 

And that’s when he decided, he wouldn’t let the suffocating dissatisfying life that hovered in his mind’s eye be his. He would...go to Seoul. He would _dance_. He would make his own way. And that was the moment it happened, a red string appearing on his left hand, on the fourth finger, pulling taut from the northwest. And he slid down the wall, mouth gaping, almost forgetting to breathe. 

Before that moment, Hakyeon hadn’t been completely sure soulmate threads existed. He had only heard of them, nothing more. People sometimes drifted through at the edges of his life, who talked about their a strings, their red strings. Some had lost it - he had heard that red strings were finicky things; but others, he supposed, found their way to their person, followed the line home. It wasn’t super common - Hakyeon didn’t know any statistics on the matter, but he’d bet maybe 1 in every 20 or thirty people? He supposed that sounded like a lot, but it didn’t feel that way. He had never really been wholly interested in the idea, because he figured it didn’t matter. He would get a purple string, a perfectly lovely normal spouse, and that would be that. He had never expected…

He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at his hand, but when he finally looked up it was fully dark. The street lamps were on. He hurried home. 

The next several months passed in a blur. His parents weren’t thrilled that the prospect of him gallivanting northward to study what they thought might be a hobby instead of the searing passion Hakyeon attempted to convince them it was. They allowed him to apply to arts schools in Seoul, however, as long as he also applied to several business schools closer to home. Hakyeon knew that they were probably secretly hoping he would be rejected, without malice but also without understanding, and forced into taking up his spot at a business school. Their plot was foiled, however, when his acceptance from K-Arts rolled in. Hakyeon began to plan a move to Seoul. 

When he got to the city, he found it jarring. It was huge, sprawling, and there were more people than he previously thought possible. He quickly moved into a dorm, where he had _two_ roommates, something he was surprised by but not something he couldn’t manage. And just like that, he studied. And he danced. A year went by and he moved out, back home for a spell, then right back to the city. _He’d get his own apartment_ he decided, but ended up with a roommate out of necessity - it wasn’t cheap to live in the city. Within the year, that guy moved out and was replaced by a fourth more permanent roommate, an art student with glasses, hair that stuck up in several directions, and a too-large nose that Hakyeon found endearing. 

“I’m Lee Jaehwan,” he said, his voice brash and a shade too loud. But it was pleasant. Hakyeon enjoyed living with him, soon realizing that Jaehwan was only too loud when he was uncomfortable or trying to be the center of attention. He seemed to exist mostly in silence when alone, a calm, comfortable quiet, plodding away at sketches and larger paintings. Hakyeon became accustomed to coming across a vaguely zombified Jaehwan at 5:30 in the morning, paint or charcoal smeared across his cheek. He was passionate and no nonsense in his work, Hakyeon found, even as he was bombastic and off the walls around his friends. Hakyeon found this out on a Saturday night during late January of his senior year. He was neck deep in auditions, and a paper about the history of some style of dance, he couldn’t quite remember, when Jaehwan offered up the airy, “Do you mind if I have a couple people over this Saturday?” Hakyeon had said no, he didn’t. And Jaehwan had offered up a smile, dazzling in its almost childlike simplicity. Hakyeon trusted it immeasurably.

And, when Saturday rolled around, Hakyeon was unspeakably happy he had, even as Jaehwan excitedly entertained. Even as Jaehwan attempted to sing along with the music he was playing, Hakyeon found that the slack he had been feeling in his red string, the one still snug around his finger, ever since he had moved to the city, finally had an explanation. 

There he was, tall and thin, black hair trim at the sides and longer on top, feathered gently over one incredibly feline eye, Jaehwan’s friend, a business student from some nearby college, a red string tied around the fourth finger on his left hand leading straight to... Hakyeon gaped at him. He was unmistakably the hottest person that Hakyeon had ever seen, and by some fucking incredible stroke of luck, he was _Hakyeon’s_. Not that the man himself had seemed to notice. He just kind of stood in the doorway of Hakyeon and Jaehwan’s apartment, clad all in black from black skinny jeans to a loose band t-shirt, to four earrings studding the entire side of his left ear, to the pea coat draped carelessly over his shoulders. He was a vision in contrasts, dark clothes on pale skin, and Hakyeon wanted to drink him in forever.

“Taekwoon,” Jaehwan sang, gliding into the man at the door, Taekwoon folded him into an almost studious embrace. Hakyeon wanted to laugh - it looked as though the man had studied hugging out of a book - but he just couldn’t catch his breath enough to do so. “You made it.”

Hakyeon didn’t register that there were other guests here already, just a couple of them, girls chatting together in the living room, long hair cascading over shapely backs. He didn’t see them until later. Right now he just needed to be introduced.

“Taekwoon, this is my roommate, Hakyeon,” Jaehwan said after a moment, and Taekwoon’s gaze shifted, skating over his impossibly high cheekbones to rest on Hakyeon.

“Nice to meet you,” Hakyeon said, extending a hand to shake. Taekwoon’s eyes didn’t leave his for a second, grasping his hand firmly and shaking. The skin-to-skin contact felt...comfortable to Hakyeon. As though this skin, this body heat...it was all so familiar and yet new, all at once. 

Taekwoon’s eyes widened a fraction, staring at Hakyeon, a breath ghosting past deliciously pink lips. “You…” he said, softer than Hakyeon could have imagined. His voice was like birdsong, somehow, even though Hakyeon felt he had never given the birds much notice. 

“Me,” he said, the fact that Taekwoon had yet to release his hand giving him a rush of confidence. He smiled in what he hoped was a dazzling fashion. Taekwoon looked taken aback, his hand slipping momentarily from Hakyeon’s grasp. 

“Shit,” he muttered. And Hakyeon’s smile dimmed. “Oh, fuck,” Taekwoon said. And now Hakyeon was sure he looked confused, even bewildered. Taekwoon seemed to be looking for something on the floor, Hakyeon wasn’t sure, but he was motionless, staring at the floor as though it would answer all of his questions if he just stood still long enough. 

“Are you okay?” Hakyeon found himself asking, drawing closer. Taekwoon let him, and he was relieved. Taekwoon peaked up at him, looking sheepish, pink tinting his cheeks. 

He cleared his throat. “Uh,” he cleared his throat again. “Yes.” He swallowed. It looked uncomfortable. Hakyeon reached out to put his hand on the man’s shoulder, pausing just before touching him. Fuck, was this all right? He was just on the verge of asking, when Taekwoon leaned into it, a tiny smile on his face. “This was just not how I imagined we would meet.” And at that Hakyeon felt his heart squeeze a little bit. His smile returned, now slightly more conspiratorial, as he leaned even closer to Taekwoon. 

“How did you imagine it?” he said, so low that no one but Taekwoon could hear him. And Taekwoon gave the most beautiful, genuine, tinkling laugh. And Hakyeon felt something in him fall into place. It was euphoric, standing there like this, being in contact in the smallest of ways and yet wholly aware of and almost in sync with another person. 

The rest of the night fell away around them. Conversation came easily and yet so did silences. They were comfortable enough with each other that they could fall silent for minutes at a time and not feel disjointed when they spoke once more. Hakyeon felt that such a thing was enormously important and could tell, just by the way he stood and by the way he looked out the window that showed the view of the city, Taekwoon felt the same. 

They were soulmates. 

Taekwoon left that first night at a reasonable hour, asking Hakyeon shyly for his number, and promising to text him soon. He would like to get dinner the next day, and they had to organize the details. Hakyeon felt incandescent. 

Within the month, Taekwoon was over almost every night. He was a surprisingly cuddly sleeper, Hakyeon found, delighting in every tiny detail. They fell together like puzzle pieces, perfect complements. Coffee and tea, song and dance, moonlight and sunlight, introvert and extrovert. Hakyeon went into his next several months of auditions with a broad smile on his face. This was his dream, and he was nervous about achieving it, for sure, but he always had something to look forward to now. He thought it improved his performance greatly. He landed a gig before the semester was over, coming home and smothering his then boyfriend in kisses until Jaehwan made a loud gagging sound from the other room. 

Hakyeon found that in the city, soulmates were more common. He thought it was inevitable, with how many people there were concentrated here, and how many people passed through for business or pleasure. People found each other here. He was glad to be among them. He was happy to be among them, happier than he had thought possible. 

And now, years had passed. Taekwoon had graduated business school and delved right into business, opening his own cafe, a passion project that Hakyeon was surprised by, but was immediately supportive of anyway. They got married two years after college, in a shower of flowers and champagne. Hakyeon thought it was probably the most incredible event he had ever attended. Even his parents were incredibly happy, their disapproval of his chosen career path evaporating the moment he achieved success, their reservations about his moving to the big city disappearing the moment they met their charming and quiet son-in-law to be. 

Hakyeon was considered a marginally successful professional dancer in Seoul by the time he was 26. He was doing fewer gigs at this point, however, trying to move more into the world of choreography. Taekwoon had expressed an immediate interest in starting a family, once they were married, and he found himself agreeing wholeheartedly even before he had completely thought it through. Years ago, on that walk through the streets of Changwon, he had thought of children as some kind of suffocating, trapping force. But with Taekwoon… So much had changed with Taekwoon, that even the thought of having children and slowing his career down for a bit was welcome, even met with enthusiasm. 

And especially now, as he stared at the sleeping baby in his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to regret a single thing. 

He was a tiny thing. Precious. A shock of black hair on top of his head as he opened his toothless mouth soundlessly in his sleep, shifting in the bundle of blankets in Hakyeon’s arms. 

“I honestly have never seen anyone so perfect,” he murmured. Taekwoon made an assenting noise, settling beside Hakyeon on the couch. He held out his arms, a half pout on his face, and Hakyeon rolled his eyes, but handed the baby over. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you loved him more than me,” he whispered, hooking his chin over Taekwoon’s shoulder in order to keep the baby in view. He felt Taekwoon’s chuckle more than heard it. 

“It’s different,” he murmured, and Hakyeon grinned as he kissed his husband on the cheek before getting up and stretching, hearing his spine crack, shifting back into space. 

“Suuuure,” he said, teasing. Taekwoon hummed in response. And then kept humming. He was almost singing to the baby and when Hakyeon turned around to look, he felt his heart squeeze again. One time of thousands in the courtship of Jung Taekwoon. 

“You know. We really should name him. Baby Jung-Cha only works for like. The first week,” he said softly. “After that, people give you weird looks.” Taekwoon chuckled again, before situating his gaze on Hakyeon. 

“I have given that...consideration,” he said, in that soft yet penetrating way of his. Hakyeon tilted his head. 

“And what have you concluded?” he asked, just as the baby yawned a little. He seemed just on the edge of sleep, almost ready to wake up. Hakyeon was afraid he would wake screaming, so he knew they needed to finish their conversation quickly. 

And yet, Taekwoon gave pause. He was looking at Hakyeon with a small amount of trepidation. So he liked this name, Hakyeon thought. One to take seriously. He drifted forward, cupping Taekwoon’s jaw in his left hand, his wedding ring glowing warmly in the lamplight filling their small apartment. “What is it?”

Taekwoon took a breath in through his nose. “Gwangsik,” he said. And Hakyeon felt himself still. There was a familiar sensation about him, of something falling into place, a kind of adrenaline laced calm, where he felt the need to fight against the oncoming change even as he knew it would be for the better. Everything would fall into place. 

“That’s...perfect.” And (the baby opened his eyes, soundless and content), honestly, it was.


	3. Sunrise

It was too early for Jaehwan to process this. He was still reeling from whatever nightmare it was that had convinced him that he had somehow _stopped feeling_ his legs, patting them up and down, and now he had this red string on his finger and just. What. He groaned and flopped back against the hardwood of his floor. 

It had to be before 6 am he thought, draping his left arm over his eyes. He didn’t want to see the string anymore. He didn’t even want to think about it. The sun was coming up on a string filled day and he just wanted a couple more minutes’ peace. 

He felt like he was bartering with the empty sky. 

He supposed he was meant to feel euphoric about this - he had a string and it was red, what a joyous day for all mankind - but Jaehwan rather wanted to scream instead. There was this paralyzing sensation hovering around him - he was still reeling from that dream, obviously, the lack of pain in his legs - and he wanted to both run and scream as far away from this as possible. This was suffocating. 

He was bound to someone - there was someone in the world right now who had somehow made the exact choice that would bring them straight to him. They were evidently destined to be together, he thought, prying his arm away from his eyes to stare more closely at the thing around his finger. It looked flimsy, and didn’t cast a shadow, even when he tried to maneuver it around the halo of light cast by his bedside lamp. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself, just some metaphysical reminder that he was going to fall in love at some point, probably, to someone who was going to worm their way into his life and into his space and honestly? That sounded terrible.

Someone in his space...someone in his brain. He didn’t have time for that. He had to. He sighed, pushing himself up from the floor. He had other things to do. 

The clock on his bedside table read 5:52 am. The sun was cresting gently over the cityscape outside his window, as he wrinkled his nose in distaste. It was too early. Granted, the sun would have woken him up in the next half an hour anyway, but Jaehwan considered those minutes precious. They were part of his routine. He sighed and grabbed has glasses, shoving them onto his face as he climbed down the stairs from his lofted bedroom, into his kitchen area. He switched the water boiler on as he passed, heading to the bathroom. 

Here it became apparent that the string was an odd addition to his everyday activities. In the shower, he had to fight the instinct to keep it dry, even as he attempted to ignore it. He took a piss and had to fight the urge to tuck his left hand behind his back, to keep the the fucking string out of sight. As he brushed his teeth, he found himself trying once more to keep his hand out of his field of vision, both in and out of the mirror, which resulted in some weird kind of dance that made Jaehwan doubt the quality of his brush technique. He must look absurd he thought and, not for the first time, Jaehwan considered what a disaster he would have been on reality TV. 

He grumbled as he emerged from the bathroom, wrenching open his refrigerator and staring at neatly stacked tupperware containers of leftovers, thinking that how the media portrayed red string acquisition was blatant bull shit. Normally it involved some girl crying with joy, staring at her hand and finally knowing she wouldn’t be alone forever. Or at least that what those dramas his mother watched always seemed to be portraying. He thought the reality was probably closer to this grumbling denial he was doing. He wasn’t overjoyed. He wasn’t relieved that one day someone would accept his father’s offer of 6 goats and a stake in his accounting firm and whisk him away into a happy marriage. He was instead annoyed - this was going to throw a wrench into all of his future plans, both in regards to his career and basically everything else. _Everything_. Sure, he could go through with all of it, but now it looked like he was going to have someone attached to him at the hip, smothering him all the while. 

He shoved a plate of rice and kimchi into the microwave and maneuvered himself into barstool, rubbing at his eyes. He had a lot of work to do today, he thought, sighing into his hands. His had a weekly deadline tomorrow, and Seokjin still had to look at the comic before he put it up on the website. And sure, he had the initial sketch _and_ the lineart done but _colors_ …shading. He could already feel the headache coming on. 

And yet, honestly, this was everything he wanted to be doing. He was using his art degree. He was telling stories he was passionate about in a medium he was passionate about. This was good. And he could work from home, work the same amount of hours every day. He could maintain his schedule, and see the people he wanted to without issue. He had freedoms another job, especially a thankless desk job, would expressly prohibit. And - he looked at his hand bitterly - he was loath to change that. 

He settled on the couch with his breakfast, switching on the morning news. It was 6:15 on the dot, and he felt a sense of mixed relief and achievement about that. The newscasters were just rolling from the weather forecast into the story of some train wreck out in Germany. Jaehwan was mildly intrigued - normally more western news wasn’t reported, especially not this early in the morning. But then they put up the pictures of two boys, evidently students from just outside of Seoul, who had been on the train. Jaehwan felt his stomach clench, unjustifiably terrified, before the newswoman informed him that they had survived, with varying degrees of injuries. Their families would be arriving in the country soon, evidently, and would be seeing when they would be permitted to take their boys home. 

Jaehwan blinked, as the newswoman expertly segued into a segment on road closures and travel routes through the Seoul metropolitan area. He found himself zoning out, considering the two boys. He wondered (with a level of unexpected fervor) if he had ever crossed paths with them, seen them. They didn’t go to school _that_ close to his house, but that didn’t matter in a city like this. Anything could happen. 

He finished his breakfast in a haze of half formed thoughts. Normally the news didn’t affect him like this, normally he was able to focus on each story in turn before turning it off at 7:01 and moving over to his work station for his first work block of the day. But this morning was different...he was just. 

He was having a weird morning. There were still some ghost-like half pains running down the back of his legs - something he was attributing to his fall out of bed earlier - and that wasn’t normal. He woke up before the sun blared onto him and recalled him from his slumber, that wasn’t normal. He had this red string tied around his finger, and _that_ wasn’t normal. There were two boys from around here who had almost died in a German train wreck, and that _definitely_ wasn’t normal. And now it was 7:10, a full 9 minutes after when he would normally settle in to work, and he was beginning to feel claustrophobic. 

He snapped himself out of his self-induced trance and turned the television off forcefully, before sitting still in his quiet apartment. He took a deep breath, as deep as he could, and let it out slowly, counting backwards from ten. He closed his eyes and did that three more times, picturing his childhood home, his childhood room, the tiny jungle-scape he had painted in the corner when he was 12. When he opened his eyes again he felt marginally calmer. He didn’t feel great, but he did feel better, he supposed. But he could tell from the way the muscles were bunching between his shoulder blades that today was not going to be a great day. 

He stopped in the kitchen, setting his dish in the sink, before pausing to take his medication. Then he settled down at his desk, pulling his tablet towards him. He had coloring and shading to do, regardless of what his anxiety was doing today. He would get this done on time, he told himself, sparing one last deep breath before he dove in. 

 

8400 miles away, Han Sanghyuk was in a medically induced coma. His parents had caught a flight out of Incheon, but it wouldn’t arrive for hours yet. The doctors were rushing over him, trying to figure out how serious his injuries were - he was bleeding from here, his reflexes were delayed or nonexistent, his wrist was fractured at such a degree the bone was beginning to push through the skin. When they got him in for an MRI, they found several broken ribs, the obviously shattered wrist, and, worst of all, an impact fracture in 2 of the lower three disks of the lumbar spine. 

Several hours later, the Hans arrived, darting through the ward as quickly as they possibly could. They were informed that the prognosis was good, the injury had been discovered early and now they were basically ahead of the game in treating it. Even so, the doctors informed them, their son may never walk again. And even if he would, the road to recovery would be both grueling and long. 

And when Mrs. Han threatened tears, her wife reminded her that this was their son, and he was a fighter. He would get through this stronger than ever. The important thing was that he was alive.


	4. Wonshik

Wonshik decided, that this, the third Friday of whatever the fuck month it was, would be the day he finally ripped his eyeballs out due to boredom. This would be the day when he would finally donate his body to science, because at this point he had honestly convinced himself that being a cadaver would be more thrilling than this fucking _desk job_. He itched all over, honestly, just thinking that. _Desk job_. Why was this what he was doing?

“Because it’s the only job lowlifes like us can get.” Wonshik opened his eyes from where he had laid his head on his desk. He hadn’t realized he had been speaking out loud. His cubicle-mate, Moonkyu, was looking at him balefully. Wonshik sighed and deflated further into his desktop. 

“I’m in a bad enough mood and then you _insult_ me,” he whined. Moonkyu rolled his eyes, shoving his chopsticks into the takeout container from which he was eating lunch and putting it aside as he turned and shoved himself back into his desk. 

“C’mon man, don’t be an ass, we still have a full half day to go. Then you have a whole weekend to pretend you’ve never worked here, never will work here, and aren’t even working here now,” he said, half pleadingly. 

For a moment Wonshik felt bad. Moonkyu hated it here as much as he did, and neither of them liked to be reminded of what Wonshik had started lovingly referring to as their Sentence. Sentenced to selling advanced internet security software (that was really just the basic model, packaged differently) by their voracious, capitalistic need for money. He mourned his freedom for another moment quietly. 

Then Wonshik took a deep breath, unstuck his cheek from the plastic desk top, and dived right back into his the spreadsheets on his computer, where he was inputting all the sales everyone on the floor had made for the past quarter. It was grueling, boring work. He didn’t even get a sense of accomplishment when he finished a column or a rowl. 

By the time five o’clock rolled around, Wonshik felt that he had made no progress in anything, except for maybe the progressive death of his brain cells. He and Moonkyu agreed to meet up for drinks the next day, accompanied by Wonshik’s roommates, before they split off onto their separate buses. Wonshik got off a stop before normal so that he could pop into his favorite cafe, maybe get a chai tea latte before he allowed himself to be assaulted by the blatant cuddling mass that Taemin and Jongin tended to be at all times. 

Mata Hari was a nice little cafe, decorated in warm, cozy colors. There was a bookshelf off to the left, for free borrowing and returning, next to a nice little seating area full of cushioned chairs and nice little tables. The first time Wonshik had come here, he had followed the scent of cinnamon right up to the counter. Then a formidable looking barista/cashier had taken and made his order and that was that. Favorite coffee spot made. 

“Wonshik,” the same barista was there now, greeting him warmly. Wonshik smiled as he strode up to the counter. 

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik grinned, leaning on the counter in an over-exaggerated way. He was trying to be suave, trying to make Taekwoon look even the slightest bit impressed. He tried every time and it never worked.

“Chai tea latte?” he said, barely even noticing Wonshik’s attempts to divert him, tapping at the ipad screen he used to take orders instead. Wonshik pouted as he paid. 

“Get off my counter,” another voice came echoing down the stairs behind the counter. And Wonshik’s spine seemed to straighten of its own accord as Hakyeon, Taekwoon’s incredibly _gracious_ and _beautiful_ husband came into view. (Wonshik had to remind himself once again that Hakyeon, despite numerous clues to the contrary, could not actually read minds; if he wanted the brownie points, he was going to have to compliment the man out loud.) “Who raised you that you so frequently forget how to stand up straight?” Hakyeon’s eyes flashed under shower-damp hair, and Wonshik found himself grinning in spite of himself. 

“You met my mother, Hakyeon,” he replied easily. “You said she was lovely. She recommended a baby store when you were doing up Gwangsik’s room.” Hakyeon maintained his imperious facade for another moment before relaxing, just as the infant in his arms squirmed gently. 

“He’s right,” Taekwoon said quietly from where he was standing at the espresso machine, watching the two of them. “You thank his mother out loud every time you go into the baby’s room.”

Wonshik turned to Hakyeon, feeling some strange, overwrought sense of victory. “See? I was raised just fine. It’s your counter’s fault for being so inviting.” Hakyeon snorted, and went to sit in one of the many comfortable chairs spread throughout the dining room, settling directly across the table from the only other patron, a bespectacled guest Wonshik thought may have been... Jaehwan? Taekwoon had introduced them a while ago, but Wonshik had been too busy admiring just how enticing the pink of Jaehwan’s mouth was to really remember his name.

Wonshik gazed at them, half torn between wanting to sit down and relax for the first time all week, or just head home, where Taemin and Jongin were surely diving into some kind of weekend anime marathon. He sighed just as Taekwoon whistled lowly, to get his attention, holding out a steaming to-go cup of what Wonshik knew would be the most incredible spiced tea beverage he would ever drink. Notes of cinnamon that could make a spice merchant cry. Wonshik loved it so much. 

“You’re a god,” he murmured as he took a deep breath of the scented steam. Taekwoon raised an eyebrow at him, but gave no verbal answer. “Where’s Sehun? I thought he normally worked tonight?” 

“Exams for his summer course,” Taekwoon replied, in that soft way he had. Wonshik had to admire the way Taekwoon worked honestly, no excess words - he spoke with care, and Wonshik didn’t know many people like that. He thought it was great, wished he could emulate it. But then where would his gratuitous musings on the advantages of cadaver life even go? “I gave him the night off.”

“Which was a pain in the ass 25 minutes ago, when the ladies’ zumba class from down the road let out and he was back there all alone,” the bespectacled man - Jaehwan? Wonshik was pretty sure it was Jaehwan - supplied. There was a rye quirk to his eyebrow and Taekwoon caught sight of it and flushed. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. And Jaehwan grinned, turning back to his technological setup (consisting of a tablet and a computer - although Wonshik had no idea why someone would need both at once). Hakyeon watched him, letting the baby suck on his forefinger in lieu of a pacifier. Wonshik drifted over and sat at the table next to them, telling himself that he could take the 15 minutes it would take him to drink his tea. Taekwoon gave a cursory glance to the whole of the almost empty cafe before following him, coming up behind Hakyeon and leaning over his shoulder to smile wholeheartedly at the baby. 

“You want to hold him?” Hakyeon murmured, and Taekwoon breathed an affirmative noise. He paused for a second, however, before taking the infant in his arms, and kissed Hakyeon, quickly and sweetly. Wonshik watched, feeling as though he was intruding on some kind of private life. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he was old enough for some of his friends to be married, to have a baby. Sure, Hakyeon and Taekwoon were both a little older than him, but not much. It was weird to process that in a couple years, he could be trading sweet kisses with his lover. He could be cradling a baby of his own. He both wanted it viscerally and was repelled by the idea of so much responsibility. 

Jaehwan didn’t even look up as they made a show of trading off the baby. Wonshik thought he seemed absorbed in whatever he was doing…which based on the succinct lines he was tracing his stylus along, seemed to be some kind of drawing. Wonshik watched him, slightly transfixed for a moment. 

“How’s the webcomic coming?” Hakyeon asked outloud. Wonshik looked back at him for a moment and found that the baby exchange had been successful - Taekwoon was now humming to Gwangsik and pacing around the shop, looking almost blissful. 

Jaehwan was halfway through his answer before Wonshik began listening to him. He shook his head, a little exasperated at himself. His meds were wearing off; at least they had lasted for the work day, he thought balefully, sipping his drink. 

“...and Seokjin wasn’t pleased with the last panel, something about the dialogue coming across _clunky_ , so here I am, rewriting, 18 hours before my deadline,” Jaehwan took a deep breath. Wonshik gazed at him. He looked stressed, which would fit if he were… who even had deadlines on Saturdays anyway?

“Well I’m sure he’ll like what you’re doing now,” Hakyeon said soothingly. “You guys have never had an issue before.”

“I’ve never had a day like this before either,” Jaehwan countered. He placed his stylus on the tabletop to rub gently at his temples. “Nightmares, lack of sleep, train wrecks, and - “ But he cut himself off, rubbing his hands together before cracking his knuckles and picking his pen up again. “This has been an off day, and I honestly just want it to be over.”

“Well, finish up your panel and I’ll walk you home,” Hakyeon said. “I’ll even get you a chamomile tea on the house.” Jaehwan looked up at him, a soft look on his face. 

“You’re still like. The best roommate _ever_ ,” he said. He made some short, linear strokes that Wonshik thought might be writing. Hakyeon snorted. 

“No one can ever compare to me, trust me, I know. It’s hard being this fabulous and one of a kind,” he ran a hand backwards through his hair, looking positively glamorous in jeans and plain black t-shirt. Wonshik fought the urge to laugh. Hakyeon’s gaze snapped to him.

“What are you still doing here?” he said, sounding much more brusque than Wonshik knew he was being. And Hakyeon betrayed his own front by grinning at him. “Are you doing all right, Wonshik?” he asked, suddenly, but with real concern. It made Wonshik feel warm inside. 

“I’m all right,” he said, warming his hands on a coffee cup. “I hate my job,” he found himself laughing. He glanced at Hakyeon and found he wasn’t smiling back, but instead looked as though he was thinking. 

“You could always quit and come work for us,” Hakyeon replied, an offer that, for a moment, left Wonshik completely speechless. “I could probably set up a class for you at the studio if you wanted, too? You dance, right?” Wonshik blinked at him. This wasn’t what he was expecting at all. Several job offers right off the bat - he hadn’t even had to interview. 

“I’m sure Taekwoon doesn’t need any extra hands,” Wonshik found his voice slowly, watching Taekwoon bouncing and cooing at his tiny son all the way across the cafe.

“He does if he wants to keep himself competitive,” Hakyeon sighed. Wonshik looked at him, watched as Hakyeon also watched Taekwoon bouncing their son. His face waxed soft as he did.

“What do you mean?” Wonshik found himself asking, and Hakyeon glanced at him before lowering his voice. 

“There’s another cafe opening across the street,” he murmured. “A small one, a lot like this. If he wants to keep himself in business, he’s probably going to have to extend hours, give into some more gimmick-y bull shit. Ask more of his employees. All that shit he hates.” Hakyeon sighed. “But he’ll do it. We have the baby now, so he’ll do it.”

Wonshik blinked. “I’ll help out if you need it,” he found himself volunteering. Hakyeon smiled at him. “And, honestly, the dance class gig sounds amazing.” Hakyeon fist pumped the air. 

“See? Doesn’t that feel better already? Even if you don’t quit your job, at least now you have something to look forward to,” he said, grinning. And Wonshik found that, as scary as Hakyeon tried to be, he was an incredible softie, incredibly compassionate inside. He found his attention fixed on him once more as they lapsed into silence, Hakyeon watching Taekwoon, Jaehwan tapping away behind them. 

“Fucking _done_ ,” Jaehwan eventually said from behind them, with such emphasis on the word Wonshik wondered how stressed he really was. 

Hakyeon clapped, which drew Taekwoon’s attention away from the baby for a moment. Hakyeon was beaming at Jaehwan like a proud parent at that point, and Wonshik saw Taekwoon smile softly as he returned his attention to the baby. 

“Ready to go home?” Hakyeon almost sang. “Send that off to Seokjin so that he can look it over before bed.” Jaehwan pulled a _don’t nag_ face, but Wonshik watched as he made a couple moves on his laptop, betting he was following Hakyeon’s advice. When he finished, he closed his laptop and Hakyeon beamed. “Now everything is Saturday Jaehwan’s problem. Isn’t Friday Jaehwan relieved?” 

Jaehwan half-smiled in spite of himself. “Of course I am, mom,” he answered. Hakyeon clapped again, leaning across the table and taking Jaehwan’s face aggressively into his hands. 

“Ah! So cute,” he said, squishing Jaehwan’s cheeks. “Now, home. I’m walking you home.” And Jaehwan sighed as Hakyeon sprang back from him, prancing off toward his husband and their baby, who had just whimpered helplessly. 

Jaehwan shook his head affectionately, slipping his laptop and tablet into a shoulder bag. He snapped it closed and looked at Hakyeon and Taekwoon communing over their tiny son in the center of the cafe. “You think I could sneak out without him noticing if I just go now?” he whispered. 

“You could try,” Wonshik answered. Jaehwan jumped at the sound of his voice, looking quite surprised to find him there. Wonshik was somewhat stung, but shook it off. “But I doubt it would work.” Jaehwan gave a half shaky smile.

“Me too,” he answered. He rubbed at his eyes under his glasses for a moment. “But,” and he grinned, and Wonshik thought it was dashing, “I’ve got to try.” And he darted for the door. 

Hakyeon was after him in a moment, springing away from Taekwoon with a shout of “Lee Jaehwan” before springing back and kissing Taekwoon and then speeding out the door. Wonshik actually laughed this time.

He finished the last sip of his chai latte before he stood, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders as he went. He trashed the to-go cup before striding up to Taekwoon, and a wide eyed Gwangsik, who looked as though he was trying to take the visual splendor of the room without moving his head. 

“He’s precious isn’t he?” Wonshik found himself asking. Taekwoon nodded, a half-smug smile spread across his face. He was obviously so in love at this point, that Wonshik didn’t want to imagine what would happen to anyone who would try to come between them. He almost felt bad for the cafe across the way. 

“Thanks for the latte, Taekwoon,” he said, in lieu of good-bye. Taekwoon nodded at him, obviously pleased that he had liked it. “And thank Hakyeon for me. He kind of said everything I needed to hear.” And he shrugged as Taekwoon smiled at him, a knowing look on his face. Evidently Hakyeon was good at that. 

He waved at Taekwoon as he exited the shop, and Taekwoon used the baby’s hand to wave back. Then, Wonshik supposed he would stand there and wait for Hakyeon to come home. He set off in the direction of his apartment, looking up for stars amongst the light pollution of the sky. There weren’t that many, but enough that Wonshik was able to distract himself from making eye contact with anyone who passed. He didn’t want to have any kind of social interaction at the moment, he needed to think. 

He could work at his friend’s cafe - the cafe with the best chai lattes in the world - if he wanted. He could teach a dance class (which sounded really awesome), if he wanted. He could change his entire outlook from this suffocating desk job forever type thing to maybe...maybe inching closer to his dreams. If he taught the dance classes, he might even be able to use his own mixes to choreograph to. That would be better exposure for his music than what he was getting now. 

Wonshik pressed the code to get himself into his apartment building, closing the door carefully behind him before he mounted the stairs. 

Wonshik really wanted to produce music, if he was being honest with himself. He wanted to produce his own music, produce other’s music. He wanted to have the power to make other people’s dreams come true, he just needed to make his own come true before that. And, honestly, working in a cafe and teaching dance classes sounded better, closer to his dream, than selling shitty computer software anyway. He was beginning to consider the pay cut. 

He punched the code to get into his apartment, slipping through the door and catching sight of Jongin curled into Taemin’s lap on the couch, fast asleep. Taemin made shushing motions as Wonshik walked past and Wonshik tried to silently assure him that he wouldn’t make any sound as he scurried his way into his room, closing the door quietly behind him. 

Jongin and Taemin were both following their dreams, he thought, considering their schedules full of rehearsals and ballet classes for kids, as he swung his bag off of his shoulders. Honestly, if he wasn’t also doing that himself, what right did he even have to live here, to live with them? He breathed out a half laugh. Damn that was easier than he thought. 

And that’s honestly how Kim Wonshik decided anything (too quickly to really consider the negative side), but (he conceded to himself) this was how he _had_ to quit his crappy dead end desk job. If he thought about it too much, he’d try to be logical. And dreams weren’t logical, and he finally realized it was time to follow his.


	5. Recovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologies if there are any inaccuracies here. I'm trying to make this as authentic as possible, but I'm not personally familiar with incomplete lumbar spinal injuries or the like. I'm doing my best with the information I can google.

Sanghyuk was discharged from the German hospital a little more than two and a half weeks after the accident. He was moved into a rehabilitation center immediately afterwards, monitored and treated as they attempted to teach him how to use his legs again. It wasn’t that they were completely non-functioning - he could feel them, could feel the doctors _moving them_ , there was _pain_ \- but they weren’t moving _right_ and he was so frustrated. He was so frustrated and this was so humiliating. Nothing worked right in the lower half of his body anymore, and he felt at a loss whenever he tried to explain how that made him feel. He shuddered, feeling like some kind of chasm was slowly forming in his chest. 

He remembered when Sungjae had left. He had been discharged after about a week, his arm in a sling. The injuries he had sustained hadn’t been as severe as Sanghyuk’s - some broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and minor lacerations - so he had been able to leave almost two weeks ago. He hadn’t been able to look Sanghyuk in the eyes, he remembered. In spite of what his mother said, Sanghyuk was convinced it was because he was embarrassed to look at Sanghyuk. 15 years of friendship down the drain all because Sanghyuk couldn’t fucking control how hard he was thrown against the train window, and how severely he had been slammed against the ground. 

His mothers were being incredibly good about all of this. Yeseul had actually flown back home a little over a week ago, determined to rent an apartment in Seoul so that her son could recover fully in proximity to the best medical centers the country could offer. His mom had stayed with him, determined to help him in whatever way she could, even giving emotional support although even she had professed that she had no idea what he was going through. He told her that being there was enough. Even if it wasn’t, sometimes, she deserved to know that her efforts weren’t going to waste. 

And on top of all of this, something that he wanted to forget, something he refused to talk about to anyone...the fucking _red string_. 

He knew how these worked, he _knew_. This was how his mother had met Yeseul. He had been five when it had happened - she had been talking with him about school, about going to school, and as he expressed his interest, she fell utterly silent. He thought something was wrong, was terrified when he saw silent tears streaming down her face. But she had smiled at him, even through her tears, and he knew everything was going to be fine. 

Yeseul had been his principal, the principal at the primary school his mother had enrolled him in. They met the first time Sanghyuk had gotten himself in trouble - something about fistfighting, and he was pretty sure it was because someone had insulted his mother, and the fact that she was single and raising him on his own. The moment his mother had seen Yeseul, he just felt the entire atmosphere in the room change. He remembered getting ice cream that night, even though he was going to be grounded, because, sure, he was in trouble, but his mother had just met her soulmate - it called for celebration. 

Sanghyuk, honestly, hadn’t been expecting this. Soulmates were rare, he thought. How likely was it that a mother and her son would both achieve this societal ideal? He didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t care who the person on the other side of this line was, because how could he even know if they would stay after they saw the state he was in? He couldn’t be sure, and he was afraid to find out. 

And now he was worried about something he had expressly forbidden himself to worry about. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Here came the migraine. 

It had been a month since the accident, and he was finally going home. He thought that a month had been a somewhat excessive amount of time, sure that if he had pressed the doctors would have let him travel home a week or two ago, but his mother had insisted. Yeseul had flown back to Germany, both to see her wife and to help them travel, as Sanghyuk was in a wheelchair and wasn’t really sure how he was going to do this. How did someone transfer from a wheelchair to his seat? How did one even go to the bathroom, if he needed it, when he was on an airplane and couldn’t really walk? Would he need the bathroom? He was still having issues in that area. He closed his eyes as they threatened tears. Sure he was depressed and unsure of how he was going to get through this particular chapter of his life, but he didn’t want to let the rest of the world know that. No one but he needed to know that. 

His legs hurt. His back hurt. The lines of healing scars underneath the loose layer of bandages on his wrist, from two separate reconstructive surgeries, itched. He was miserable and even a little sweaty. But, 12 hours and an almost nap later, he was home. Well, _home_...this new, rather small apartment in Seoul. He felt guilty just seeing it, stacked with boxes, cluttered with his mothers’ things. This was his fault. If he had just been a couple inches to the left or to the right, none of this would have been necessary. If he had just...moved out from underneath Sungjae’s head. If he had sat in another car, in another seat. If he had just. Not decided that they needed to be on the next train out of Amsterdam...everything would be different. He would have been home for two weeks already, prepping to head to grad school. He felt himself deflate slightly in his chair. 

“Honey.” It was his mother, and she looked more tired than he had ever seen her. Crushing guilt rang through him again. 

Honestly, this was the worst he’d ever felt. He didn’t know what to do about it either - his moms were trying their best, but he knew this was wearing on them, and knowing that was wearing on him too. He was going through the motions, going to physical therapy, making minute progress (according to the doctors; he couldn’t feel anything at all), but he-he felt stagnant. Suffocating. An endless cycle of endless sadness… He found himself staring at blank space all of the time now, drawn so far out of his mind he felt he was forgetting who he was. 

He was depressed, his mother said. And he blinked at her, languid and almost blank, because he didn’t really understand what that was supposed to mean. Of course he was depressed. His mothers were going out of their minds with worry, his legs didn’t fucking work anymore, and he hadn’t talked to Sungjae in almost 3 months, since just about a week after he had gotten home. He had nothing to distract him from how miserable this all made him anymore, either, because everything he liked to do had started feeling too taxing. Existing took enough effort, honestly, it was too much to try to do something else on top of that. Sometimes he felt it was too much even to remind himself to breathe. 

“Honey, you need to eat,” his mother was saying softly. She was wrapped in a sweater of Yeseul’s, dark circles underneath her eyes. She had placed a bowl of...some kind of noodle before him almost 20 minutes ago. “Please.” He thought she might be begging. There were tears in her eyes. And, before he knew it, there were matching tears in his, leaking down his face. Suddenly, he was openly sobbing into his noodles, his mother pulling up a chair and wrapping her arms around him, telling him it was all going to be all right. He felt like there was nothing but sadness left inside him, but the crying was helping somehow. His chest felt less tight amongst all of it... he felt like he could breathe again, even as he sobbed.

And the blur of the last three and half months finally came to a head, and he started to, slowly, feel a little bit more alive again. But it was hard, and he still mostly wanted to stay in bed...he wanted. He cleared his throat and rolled over in bed to look up at the ceiling. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore. To feel better he guessed. 

He brought the hand with the string up towards the ceiling, wondering (and not for the first time) whether it would honestly lead to anything. He wondered if maybe having the person this connected to with him would make him feel better. Did soulmates work like that? Like magic? Did they just fix all the fucked up shit in your life? He knew they didn’t, but he wanted, if only for a moment, to think that they did. 

He pushed himself up into a seated position, the blanket he had been sleeping under falling from his shoulders. He looked down at himself, realizing how thin he looked, placing his hand over the ridges formed by his ribs, poking through his skin, fitting his fingers in between them. He hadn’t been eating. He chuckled to himself...that’s probably why he felt so wholly like crap.

He moved himself to the edge of the bed, moving each of his legs out from under the blanket, placing his feet on the floor. He had limited sensation, he knew, but he still couldn’t tell if the vague impression of the coolness of the hardwood was something he was imagining, or something he could actually feel. He heaved himself over into the wheelchair, which was parked next to the bed, always ready, and then wheeled himself to the bathroom. 

Twenty minutes later, his mother was in the kitchen, smiling at him over her coffee. Yeseul had to be at her school early, but mom stayed with him and went with him to all of his doctor’s appointments. He smiled back at her, his face feeling odd as he did it. He hadn’t done that in a while. His mother seemed tired but pleased. 

“Sanghyuk,” she said, almost at the same moment that he said, “Mom.” She raised her eyebrows for a second, and then paused to let him speak. 

“Mom, I think... I’m depressed,” he said. This was based off of an hour’s research on his phone last night when he couldn’t sleep. It made sense for his situation, all his symptoms fit. He just wasn’t sure what he could do about it. 

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Parsed that out, have you?” she said, slyly, and he gaped at her. He was halfway through yelling “Hey!” when she grinned at him, a real, full grin, putting her hand over his. “What would you like to do about that, honey?” 

He paused, confused by her response. “I-I,” he stuttered, then gathered himself. “What can I do?” She hummed, sitting back in his seat. 

“Well, therapy would be what I would suggest. I think you need to talk to someone about what’s been happening, about how frustrated you are. But I don’t want to make you do that. Alternatively, we could just try to keep you on a solid schedule, get you eating right, sleeping regularly or what have you...see what happens,” she listed, although she had been thinking about it for some time. He supposed she probably had. 

Sanghyuk shrugged at her. “Uhm.” Talking about this...what would that really...do. He wasn’t sure. Therapy? Could be? He was having trouble forming coherent thoughts. “I don’t know.”

His mother nodded, understanding. “Well, take the day. Figure it out.” And then she got up, going to make breakfast. 

So, Sanghyuk went to physical therapy. He played a couple minutes of video games after that, but listlessness was falling on him again. He sighed, looking at his scarred hand. Maybe talking to someone wouldn’t be a terrible idea. He’s not sure what he would say, but maybe they could tell him what to do, tell him how to stop feeling this way. Or how to start to stop feeling this way. 

He told his mother as much at dinner and she smiled. “I’ll set something up,” she said. She had slipped so easily back into managing his life, he thought, it was almost like he had never gone to college at all. He shook his head. She was the best mom he could have asked for, honestly, but sometimes he wished he could be a little more independent...he wasn’t sure it was feasible at the moment though. He was sure she had considered that.

And that’s how Sanghyuk found himself in the waiting room of a Dr. Song on Tuesday morning, filling out a sheath of paperwork as he waited to be called in. Medical history? He almost snorted as he held himself back from writing ‘ask me about why I’m in the wheelchair’ on the form. He thought that would hardly be appropriate. 

He finished the forms in a rush and swung himself up to the reception desk, where the nurse took his paperwork and then smiled as he told him that the doctor would be right with him. He returned to his mother at a reduced speed, watching as she flipped a page in her magazine - something fancy with a famous actor on the front - and wanting to thank her. He didn’t manage to speak before the door to the back office opened. He looked up as a young man came out. 

He was a soft looking guy, his hair down over his round glasses. His mouth soft, pink. His ears sticking out slightly from under his hair, a little point to them. He was...beautiful, Sanghyuk thought, wrapped up in a too big sweater and soft pants. He looked tired, but was smiling, bidding goodbye to the doctor and pushing his glasses up his nose. That’s when Sanghyuk saw it. 

There was a red string tied around the fourth finger on his left hand. Sanghyuk’s soulmate was in the waiting room at his therapist’s office.


	6. Hongbin, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a doozy, so I'm going to put some warnings up here. 
> 
> This chapter contains descriptions of a panic attack and allusions to an abusive relationship. If either of these things are triggering to you, it would probably be beneficial to stop now. My writing may not be incredibly realistic, but I don't want anyone taking any risks. 
> 
> <3 Love you all.

Hongbin wished he could fully communicate how much he wanted his manager to burn in hell, with words, on his face, but he was instead trapped in an endless photoshoot, his hand on some unfamiliar girl’s thigh, wrapped in stiff and tacky high fashion… He had to look purposefully glazed, in a sparkly yet bland sort of way. There was no way to communicate how deeply he wanted to bury the man alive, knowing that he would suffocate helplessly deep under the ground, the way Hongbin felt he was suffocating in this fucking too-bright sham of an upscale living space. He was seething.

“Could. Could he soften? A little? We need a more approachable look,” the photographer was saying - not even speaking directly to Hongbin, as though he thought Hongbin couldn’t understand him, or was perhaps some kind of dangerous, wild animal. Hongbin closed his eyes, rested his head back against the wall. He needed to relax. He needed to come down off of his blatant dissatisfaction with how his life was going and focus, instead, on what he was doing now. He needed to get through this and then he could lapse into the dedicated wall staring that had come to occupy most of his evenings. 

He tried to focus on softening his look, (lowering his eyelashes, unclenching his jaw) but his manager was fluttering about just on the edge of his vision. He was tense and unhappy and Hongbin’s fingers twitched, thinking about how that was going to play out later. He began chewing on the inside of his cheek. 

“Break!” the photographer said, exasperated, “Someone talk to him, tell him to get the tension out of his face.” He angrily unscrewed the lens on his camera, beginning to rub at the glass with a kind of tense delicacy. 

Hongbin breathed deeply and walked off of the set, playing with the hem of his t-shirt restlessly. His manager came and walked beside him in silence all the way to the water cooler. 

“You know we have a meeting with the CEO at 3:30?” he said, briskly. But Hongbin could hear the edge of controlled rage underneath his calm. He kept his face blank, sipping his water. “You need to shape up. We have to be on time. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the highest ranking official in your company? You have a duty to him,” his voice grew silky, as a chill ran down Hongbin’s spine. He leaned in then, throwing his arm over Hongbin’s shoulders in a way that Hongbin knew looked fatherly, but made his skin crawl in the worst way. He fought the urge to flinch. “Just focus. And stay calm. I’ve never had an incident with you and I would _hate_ to have one now,” there was something in the way he said it that made Hongbin almost instantly afraid, afraid of something he couldn’t place. But then the man patted Hongbin on the back, almost too forcefully, before moving away. Hongbin sipped his water, keeping his blank expression in place. He breathed slowly through his nose. 

“Hey,” came a soft voice to his left. He flinched so fucking hard. He felt too wound up, far too wound up. He crushed his empty water cup in his left hand as he turned to face the girl from the photoshoot. She was cute, genuinely smiling at him. He took a deep breath. 

“What’s up?” he said, trying for unaffected, but he could hear a quaver in his voice. He smiled and faltered just a bit. 

“They’re just ready for us again, is all,” she said. And he nodded, subtly scanning the room for a wastebasket so that he could return to set. “Behind you,” she said, softly, and he found himself staring at her, her rounded eyes and soft brown hair, wondering what she meant, what exactly she had said and _why_. She raised an eyebrow at him. “There’s a garbage behind you. If that’s what you’re looking for.” He raised his eyebrows in realization. 

“Oh,” he murmured, and caught how she smiled as he turned around to throw his cup out. She was still waiting, when he turned back around, and he guessed he must have looked surprised, because she gave a tinkling laugh. She was really very pretty, he thought, and he honestly wasn’t sure why she was over here, talking to him still. “Uhm,” he said, very suavely. She raised an eyebrow and gestured for him to follow her back to the set. 

“You seem tense,” she murmured, as they settled back into positions for the rest of the shoot. He didn’t really know how to respond to that, but she didn’t really need any response. “Is there anything I can do? I promise I don’t bite.” And he looked around at her, meeting her eyes. She was smaller than him, and honestly unthreatening in every way. But he couldn’t seem to relax the tension knotting the muscles between his shoulders.

“No, not really,” he murmured, as the photographer began to snap away. Hongbin was temporarily blinded in the afterglow.

She hummed her response, a hand still resting on his arm supportively. He couldn’t parse out why she was doing such a thing. He didn’t know her very well, this was unprecedented. He had never had a shoot partner who had been so...intrusive, unless he had known them already. But Hongbin didn’t know many people. Not anymore, really. He tended to keep to himself, especially these days. He was naturally awkward, he supposed, and combined with how difficult the past couple of years of his life had been, he didn’t have many friends. He was alone. 

At that moment her fingers squeezed at his shoulder, signaling to him that they were switching positions. Well, alone in the mental sense. This woman was still sitting next to him, attempting to be a soothing presence that he felt he didn’t need. She smiled at him when he caught her eye, though, and that was. He guessed maybe she wasn’t so bad. 

They finished within half an hour - his manager hadn’t needed to be so worried about their meeting with the CEO after all. Hongbin found himself at a mirror as a car was being pulled around to take him back to the company headquarters at 2:40, attempting to clean excess makeup from his eyelids, trying to be gentle about it. He knew there were plenty of people in dressing rooms and off to the side of the set he had just been on who would be all too happy to help him clean this off, but honestly he liked to do this himself. They were always harsh and minimalist in their movements, and he liked to take this as a moment to himself, that way no one could grimace at the sleepless bruises under his eyes, or the gauntness of his cheeks. That way he was the only one who could see the boyish fear in his eyes, as he started to realize that maybe, his boyhood dream wasn’t actually achievable, that maybe he was cracking under the pressure. 

“Come on, Hongbin. You don’t want us to be late, do you?” the voice cut through his inner monologue. He raised his head a bit to see his manager giving him an almost jovial stare, but Hongbin could see the muscle jumping in his clenched jaw. He was angry - at what, Hongbin didn’t know...but he could guess. He felt a lick of hot anger burn through his stomach at the injustice of it. He clenched his left hand around the makeup wipe he had been using, and followed the man from the building, discarding the wipe along the way. 

“Wait!” he heard, just as he was about to get into the car. And as his manager sighed, obviously put upon, Hongbin turned around to meet the girl from the photoshoot, still smiling. She was incredibly tiny, he thought, watching her jog over to him, and her face looked quite young when it wasn’t contoured beyond belief. She stopped before him and shoved a business card into his hand. “Text me if you need anything, you know?” she said, shyly. And then she was off again, leaving Hongbin with the impression of a bright smile and a maybe rather flighty human being. He liked her though. 

He didn’t look at the card until he was settled in the car. Once his manager was properly dozing in his car seat, he risked a look at it. Her named was Bae Joohyun - and he had never heard of her. He stowed her card in her pocket though, wondering if he would ever have the opportunity to message her. He couldn’t think of scenario where he would need to, and before he could, he found himself dozing in his car seat.

 

“We have been given an opportunity,” the CEO was saying slowly, succinctly, “to send a model to participate in Seoul Fashion week. This would be a runway show, and you would be representing the company, as well as getting your name out there amongst many up and comers in the world of fashion - whether or not you are personally aiming to be a runway model in the long run. We would like to offer this position to you, but we wanted to ask you first, if you felt you would be up to it.”

Hongbin blinked at the man, at the wrinkles carved into his face, slowly and dispassionately absorbing what he said. Runway wasn’t really Hongbin’s scene - he had only done ( _maybe?_ ) six shows in the past, and in spite of the rather warm reception he had received, there had been a lot more almost downtime before he had to actually _do_ anything. And downtime meant time sitting next to his manager, with his discontented sighs, and his exacting eyes, possessing the ability to spot even the smallest flaw. It wore on Hongbin, after a while, being picked apart. He preferred photoshoots, with their large array of people, in front of whom his manager tended to be more gentle. 

“You’re asking me how I feel about this?” Hongbin said, slowly, as the words ‘ask’ and ‘if you felt up to it’ finally fiddled through his brain. “Why does it matter how I feel?” As far as he knew, such an inquiry was unprecedented. Most of his other assignments arrived in the form of a disgruntled underling of the CEO pointing him in the vague direction of where the next job was. Hongbin sat up straighter, because it seemed the CEO had called this meeting both to give him an assignment personally, and to gauge how Hongbin was feeling overall. Which didn’t really make any sense at all.

“We’ve just been hearing some things recently, about your behavior, and wanted to see if everything was okay,” the CEO’s executive assistant clarified, giving Hongbin a level stare over his laptop. Hongbin met his gaze without flinching. 

“About my...behavior,” Hongbin repeated, slowly. His behavior? He wasn’t aware that he had been acting out in any way. He had been going through every photoshoot he had landed in the past month both unobtrusively and dispassionately. Sure there had been the odd flash of anger as he pondered how his life seemed to be going, but other than that, Hongbin could barely remember _feeling_ anything for the past month, let alone acting out. 

Then he remembered the photographer this afternoon, and how he had been vaguely irritated by the fact that Hongbin had been unable to soften his expression. Is that what this was about? Hongbin was about to open his mouth and ask before he remembered that he had only met and interacted with the photographer today, and this meeting with the CEO had been on his calendar for a week. 

“It has been brought to our attention that you have been acting out as of late, in ways that can certainly fly under the radar for a while, but are beginning to worry us,” the CEO said. He was trying to be paternal, Hongbin saw. He wished he wouldn’t. 

Hongbin set his jaw, beginning to get anxious. He honestly couldn’t think of anything he had done in the past several weeks that would warrant this - he barely went out anymore. The friends he had accumulated in the first several months of his career were much too distant now, out of his reach. He didn’t talk to them much anymore, and therefore didn’t go out with them at all anymore. He didn’t drink excessively, smoke, run up the company subsidized phone bill… He hadn’t diverged from his diet in over a month because, honestly, food had stopped being wholly appealing. It was much easier to eat grilled chicken breast when everything else also tasted as ashy as unseasoned poultry. 

Hongbin could feel himself breaking out in some kind of cold, sticky sweat and couldn’t understand why. He hadn’t done anything wrong! Why should this man think that he had?

And then there was a hand at his elbow. 

“Hongbin has been of a shorter temper recently, acting out towards me and several members of our crew,” his manager said, his tone silky. Hongbin could feel the heat from the man’s fingertips leaching through the fabric of his shirt. He felt nauseous. “He has been using strong language, even in front of the crews on the shoots, and sometimes even comes in smelling of alcohol. I initially believed he may have been homesick, but now that it has been going on for several months, I fear it may be something else.” 

Hongbin’s mind went blank. This man was...lying. Lying about Hongbin’s behavior...and it seemed he had been for some time? To people higher up in this company, to people with real influence over them. Hongbin couldn’t understand. Hongbin couldn’t think. He was…

“Don’t touch me,” he said quietly, as his manager was waxing on about his theories for Hongbin’s imaginary behavior. The man paused for a moment, turning his attention to Hongbin. The focus of the room shifted suddenly. His hand was still on Hongbin’s arm. 

“What did you say?” he was trying to sound congenial, reserved, but Hongbin could see the threat underneath. Hongbin understood that should he repeat himself, there would be trouble. 

“I said, don’t touch me.” He was louder, his statement more solid. It hung there in the air for a moment before his manager tried again, with the air of speaking to a particularly bad-tempered child. 

“Is that any way to speak to your elders, Lee Hongbin?” he said. And Hongbin felt a part of him melt away as he yanked his arm from the man’s grip and stood. He was breathing hard, sweating...he could feel his pulse racing. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, but he couldn’t be here anymore. He couldn’t - 

“Young man, sit down. We were having a discussion - “ the CEO began, but Hongbin found himself laughing (it sounded like half a sob) out of nowhere. 

“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t discuss something that didn’t happen,” he said, interrupting him. The whole room fell quiet in the wake of his disrespect, but Hongbin didn’t care. There was pure panic running through his veins at the moment; he felt like a cornered animal. He was going to lash out. 

“See what I mean, sir? His behavior has become erratic to the point of -” his manager tried, but Hongbin couldn’t take it. 

“Shut. Up,” he said, rage barely constrained. His manager blinked. 

“I’m just worried about you, Hongbinnie,” the man said. And at the endearment, Hongbin snapped. He found himself stepping forward and slapping the man ringingly across the face. There was power behind it, and the sound was raw. 

“Don’t you dare call me that,” and he was yelling. Hongbin couldn’t remember the last time he yelled. “You, of all people, do not get to call me that.” He was shaking all over, shaking terribly. 

“Young man,” the CEO said, standing up. He had gone from placating father figure to steely mogul in all of thirty seconds, and Hongbin flinched openly at the authority in his voice. “You will sit down and apologize to your senior, or I will be forced to reevaluate your contract with this company and all future activities regarding that contract.”

Hongbin knew that meant sitting around the next two years, waiting for his contract to be up just for the company to not offer him a renewal, but he didn’t care. He was past caring. He was shaking, tears running down his face and still everyone in this room seemed to think that he was the guilty one. They thought Hongbin was guilty when it was so obviously -

Hongbin stared down at his manager, repulsed by his presence, nauseated by his aura, and knew that _he_ was the one who was guilty. Hongbin knew it. And he wasn’t just guilty of lying… he was - Hongbin felt a pressure behind his eyeballs, trying to find the word for how terrible this man was, but it wouldn’t come. There were too many feelings, too many other thoughts jockeying around his head instead. 

And he felt himself look up at the CEO, who was still standing, still sending out iron vibes meant to frighten Hongbin back into his seat, even as he shook and cried, an ugly parody of an infant. But he couldn’t. Hongbin thought that to sit back in that chair, to confine himself to another two years with the snake of a man who was his manager, was to die. 

And so he ran. 

He bolted from the conference room. Bolted down the stairs, bolted from the building. He ran 6 blocks before he had to duck into an alleyway and wretch, pitifully, bringing up the water he had had earlier and nothing more. He felt so ill, so woozy. He didn’t really understand where to go from here. 

He slid down the brick wall of the alleyway, not caring what was on the ground, not caring that he may have been sitting next to a puddle of his own sick. He was heaving breath, hyperventilating. He knew he needed to stop, he needed to calm down… He couldn’t remember how. It was only the sudden thought that, should he pass out here, he might lose his phone, the only way he was going to be able to get out of this situation, that calmed his breathing to a manageable wheezing.

He didn’t know what had just happened, honestly. He couldn’t process it. Every bit of him was buzzing with panic and adrenaline. He was unsure if they would search for him, unsure of how they would react to this at all. He had never heard of it happening before. 

Eventually he dug in his pocket for his phone, typing out a text message with shaking, fumbling fingers and sending it off before slumping into the wall to wait. He should walk there by himself, he thought, but he honestly wasn’t even sure if he could stand. She had a car...she was coming to get him. She wouldn’t pass judgement...she wouldn’t ask questions. 

When his grandmother pulled up, parallel parking her car just outside of the alley - when had it gotten late enough for the street to be empty? - he couldn’t really identify what it was that he was feeling. It was only when she bent down, tipping his chin up to look at him, when he met her worried gaze, that he let it take over. And then he was sobbing openly in her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry these are like the dark chapters. This, as a project, is going to be a gentle weaving of recovery arcs and budding relationships. And Hakyeon and Taekwoon, in a solid, stable relationship in the middle of everything. But to get a recovery arc, you have to start with damage. So I hope people are enjoying this, even though it's a little depressing. Happiness will come, I promise.


End file.
